The US on Friday imposed sanctions on the son of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for serving in his father’s “illegitimate regime.”
The action freezes any assets Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra has in the US and bars US individuals or institutions from doing business with the 29-year-old.
“Maduro relies on his son Nicolasito and others close to his authoritarian regime to maintain a stranglehold on the economy and suppress the people of Venezuela,” US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said.
Photo: AFP / Venezuelan Presidency
In targeting Maduro’s son, the Treasury said that he was a member of the pro-government Constituent Assembly, which Maduro has used to sideline the National Assembly.
The statement slammed the Constituent Assembly as having been “created through an undemocratic process instigated by Maduro’s government to subvert the will of the Venezuelan people.”
Maduro Guerra “has profited from Venezuelan mines along with Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores,” and engaged in propaganda and censorship efforts on behalf of his father’s government, it added.
Venezuela called the sanctions an attack on the president himself.
“They announce illegal measures against Constituent Assembly member Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra, with the obscure goal of personalizing a continuous attack on the Bolivarian revolution and the leadership of the president of Venezuela,” the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The US had previously sanctioned the Venezuelan president and eight members of the Constituent Assembly, as part of a wide-ranging effort that has also targeted the government’s oil revenues and access to international financial markets.
The new sanctions came amid a week of simmering tensions.
On Thursday, Washington announced indictments of two Venezuelans on money-laundering charges, including Maduro’s former electric power minister and another top ministry official.
The nation’s electrical grid in March was hit with major outages, another sign of crumbling infrastructure and services that have contributed to a mass migration of Venezuelans.
On Wednesday, the Venezuelan government said it foiled a plot to assassinate Maduro, who accused the US, Colombia and Chile of complicity.
His former intelligence chief, Christopher Figuera, this week arrived in Washington after fleeing Venezuela last month following opposition leader Juan Guaido’s failed attempt to spark a military uprising on April 30.
Figuera told the Washington Post he had plotted with Venezuelan Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino and Supreme Court chief Maikel Moreno to oust Maduro during the uprising, but they got cold feet.
Ivan Simonovis, a former Venezuelan national police chief who fled house arrest in Caracas, surfaced in Washington this week to talk to US lawmakers about “criminal activities” of the Maduro government. He backed up many of Figuera’s allegations.
Simonovis said in an interview in Miami that Maduro senior has the choice of leaving or being overthrown.
Asked if there is, in fact, a drive to remove Maduro, Simonovis demurred.
“At this point, there are very high-level political decisions. I am simply part of the ‘how’ in that decision, not the ‘whether,’” he said.
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